One sign that a book has literary value is that it can be read in a number of different ways. Vice versa, the proof that pornography has no literary value is that, if one attempts to read it in any other way than as a sexual stimulus, to read it, say, as a psychological case-history of the author’s sexual fantasies, one is bored to tears.
Though a work of literature can be read in a number of different ways, this number is finite and can be arranged in a hierarchical order; some readings are obviously “truer” than others, some doubtful, some obviously false, and some , like reading a novel backwards, absurd. That is why, for a desert island, one would choose a good dictionary than the greatest literary masterpiece imaginable, for, in relation to its readers, a dictionary is absolutely passive and may legitimately be read in an infinite number of ways.
Reading – An Essay by W.H. Auden
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Section Quotes from Christopher Moore's "Practical Demonkeeping"
Like one that on that lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And no more turns his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
All mystical experience is coincidence;
and vice versa, of course.
Tom Stoppard, Jumpers
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth.
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.
John Milton
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And no more turns his head;
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
All mystical experience is coincidence;
and vice versa, of course.
Tom Stoppard, Jumpers
Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth.
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.
John Milton
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Listening - David Mura
Listening – David mura
And from that village, steaming with mist, riddled with rain,
from the fisherman in the bay hauling up nets of silver flecks;
from the droning of the Buddhist priest in the morning,
incense thickening his voice, a bit other-worldly, almost sickly;
from the oysters ripped from the sea bottom by half-naked women,
their skin darker than the bark in the woods, their lungs
as endless as some cave where a demon dwells
(soon their harvest will be split open by a blade, moist
meaty flesh, drenched in the smell of sea bracken, the tidal winds);
from the torrii[1] halfway up the mountain
and the steps to the temple where the gong shimmers
with echoes of bright metallic sound;
from the waterfall streaming, hovering in the eye, and in illusion, rising;
from the cedars that have nothing to do with time;
from the small mud-cramped streets of rice shops and fish mongers;
from the pebbles on the riverbed, the aquamarine stream
floating pine-trunks, felled upstream
by men with hachimaki2 tied round their forehead
and grunts of o-sha3 I remember from my father in childhood;
from this mythical land of the empty sign and a thousand-thousand
manners,
on the tip of this peninsula, far from Kyoto, the Shogun’s palace,
in a house of shoji4 and clean cut pine, crawling onto a straw futon,
one of my ancestors lay his head as I do now on a woman’s belly
and felt an imperceptible bump like the bow of a boat hitting a swell
and wondered how anything could cause such rocking unbroken
joy.
[1] Gate of a Shinto shrine.
2 Headband.
3 Ruler or monarch.
4 Paper screen.
And from that village, steaming with mist, riddled with rain,
from the fisherman in the bay hauling up nets of silver flecks;
from the droning of the Buddhist priest in the morning,
incense thickening his voice, a bit other-worldly, almost sickly;
from the oysters ripped from the sea bottom by half-naked women,
their skin darker than the bark in the woods, their lungs
as endless as some cave where a demon dwells
(soon their harvest will be split open by a blade, moist
meaty flesh, drenched in the smell of sea bracken, the tidal winds);
from the torrii[1] halfway up the mountain
and the steps to the temple where the gong shimmers
with echoes of bright metallic sound;
from the waterfall streaming, hovering in the eye, and in illusion, rising;
from the cedars that have nothing to do with time;
from the small mud-cramped streets of rice shops and fish mongers;
from the pebbles on the riverbed, the aquamarine stream
floating pine-trunks, felled upstream
by men with hachimaki2 tied round their forehead
and grunts of o-sha3 I remember from my father in childhood;
from this mythical land of the empty sign and a thousand-thousand
manners,
on the tip of this peninsula, far from Kyoto, the Shogun’s palace,
in a house of shoji4 and clean cut pine, crawling onto a straw futon,
one of my ancestors lay his head as I do now on a woman’s belly
and felt an imperceptible bump like the bow of a boat hitting a swell
and wondered how anything could cause such rocking unbroken
joy.
[1] Gate of a Shinto shrine.
2 Headband.
3 Ruler or monarch.
4 Paper screen.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
…the Water Genie told Haroun about the Ocean of the Streams of Story, and even though he was full of a sense of hopelessness and failure the magic of the Ocean began to have an effect on Haroun. He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one different currents, each one a different color, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity: and [the Water Genie] explained that these were the Streams of Story, that each colored strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And because the stories were held here in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories…
Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories (London, 1990), 71-72.
Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories (London, 1990), 71-72.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy, p. 146
“What is true of one man, said the judge, is true of many. The people who once lived here are called the Anasazi. The old ones. They quit these parts, routed by drought or disease or by wandering bands of marauders, quit these parts ages since and of them there is no memory. They are rumors and ghosts in this land and they are much revered. The tools, the art, the building- these things stand in judgment on the latter races. Yet there is nothing for them to grapple with. The old ones are gone like phantoms and the savages wander these canyons to the sound of ancient laughter. In their crude huts they crouch in darkness and listen to the fear seeping out of the rock. All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage. So. Here are the dead fathers. Their spirit is entombed in the stone. It lies upon the land with the same weight and the same ubiquity. For whoever makes a shelter of reeds and hides has joined his spirit to the common destiny of creatures and he will subside back into the primal mud with scarcely a cry. But who builds in stone seeks to alter the structure of the universe and so it was with these masons however primitive their works may seem to us.”
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Exotic Cuisines from a Living Room Rug
Children possess an uncanny ability to find the most disgusting things in the course of their development. What is even worst, a child will use their mouth to perform most of their examination of what they find. The other night, my wife and I had the television on, watching a movie we enjoy as well as watching our soon-to-one year old playing on the living room rug at our feet. At this time in our daughter’s life, it is hard to do anything else now that she is mobile and determined to touch and fondle every artifact likely to break. Even when I wave a plastic hanger in her face to deter her, she laughs at me and looks at me as if to say, “Oh that thing? Sheeiit. You are going to have to do better than that, dad. I already got that scar and the bloody tee shirt. ”
I stand reluctantly in the middle of the living room as a guard against anything she should not have. The television distracts me; her sounds and movements battle for my attention. Every five minutes we take turns to chase after her, refill her sippy cup, or change her dirty diaper. “What happened?” is always the first question from us once we return.
Harmless baby toys are strewn about the floor. She crawls and rolls around the brightly colored blocks, battery-operated toy cell phone, and various stuffed animals like a ninja avoiding a lethal training course. She pauses for a short moment and my subconscious speaks out, good, she isn’t moving and making noise, watch the TV, something good is going to happen any second. Out of my peripheral vision, I think I see Cori find an insect carcass. I cannot tear my eyes away from the plasma, mounted above the fireplace. The guy on TV has just found the wedding ring encased in a dog turd.
Our daughter sits up from her crawl and performs a victory wave with the desiccated corpse secured between her thumb and forefinger. She holds it high above her head just before she pops it into her mouth and begins to chew. Is she chewing on a bug? I think to myself as she looks up at me and begins to chew with a slobbery grin. I look at Sara. She is also watching Cori and instantly snatches her up off the rug, using her finger to fish for whatever is in her mouth. When she realizes it is a bug her daughter was chewing like bubble gum, the only emotion overcoming the heat of her anger, directed at me, is her revulsion of the slimy bug still sticking to her finger.
“Ah… Gross! An earwig.” She glares up at me as Cori slips back down from her lap and back onto the rug for more.
“I thought it was a piece of fuzz,” is my singular defense.
“Just get rid of it,” she growls.
“Okay, no problem.”
I skitter off happy to oblige her demand, thinking random thoughts about Cori’s momentary success. Well, that was fucking gross. I wonder if Cori has an aftertaste. At least she wouldn’t choke on it. Sara didn’t wash her finger. I flick the dead bug, which now looks like a wet coco rice crispy into the toilet and flush, eager to wash my hands.
“What happened?” I ask.
“He ate it.”
“Oh.” I stand there in the room, blocking Cori’s path into the hallway as I watch the lady on T.V. “Gross.”
I stand reluctantly in the middle of the living room as a guard against anything she should not have. The television distracts me; her sounds and movements battle for my attention. Every five minutes we take turns to chase after her, refill her sippy cup, or change her dirty diaper. “What happened?” is always the first question from us once we return.
Harmless baby toys are strewn about the floor. She crawls and rolls around the brightly colored blocks, battery-operated toy cell phone, and various stuffed animals like a ninja avoiding a lethal training course. She pauses for a short moment and my subconscious speaks out, good, she isn’t moving and making noise, watch the TV, something good is going to happen any second. Out of my peripheral vision, I think I see Cori find an insect carcass. I cannot tear my eyes away from the plasma, mounted above the fireplace. The guy on TV has just found the wedding ring encased in a dog turd.
Our daughter sits up from her crawl and performs a victory wave with the desiccated corpse secured between her thumb and forefinger. She holds it high above her head just before she pops it into her mouth and begins to chew. Is she chewing on a bug? I think to myself as she looks up at me and begins to chew with a slobbery grin. I look at Sara. She is also watching Cori and instantly snatches her up off the rug, using her finger to fish for whatever is in her mouth. When she realizes it is a bug her daughter was chewing like bubble gum, the only emotion overcoming the heat of her anger, directed at me, is her revulsion of the slimy bug still sticking to her finger.
“Ah… Gross! An earwig.” She glares up at me as Cori slips back down from her lap and back onto the rug for more.
“I thought it was a piece of fuzz,” is my singular defense.
“Just get rid of it,” she growls.
“Okay, no problem.”
I skitter off happy to oblige her demand, thinking random thoughts about Cori’s momentary success. Well, that was fucking gross. I wonder if Cori has an aftertaste. At least she wouldn’t choke on it. Sara didn’t wash her finger. I flick the dead bug, which now looks like a wet coco rice crispy into the toilet and flush, eager to wash my hands.
“What happened?” I ask.
“He ate it.”
“Oh.” I stand there in the room, blocking Cori’s path into the hallway as I watch the lady on T.V. “Gross.”
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Bald and Bug-eyed
Bald and Bug-Eyed
During our ten week training course, giving hair cuts to the horses was a skill we had to practice. As instructed in our training class, for each horse we had to clip its whiskers, mane, ear hair, and hooves. Our training NCO chose me to be the first to start clipping.
“You’re first. Go and get Bud from his stall and bring him over. We are going to clip the horses in this barn,” he said. “Everyone will have 30 minutes to clip their horses from head to toe. You all have seen it done earlier this week so there should be no problems. “
“Ok. No problem,” I replied and trotted off to the other barn, delighted it was Bud and not Reggie.
Bud was the oldest horse in the barn. At almost 25 years old, his skin looked like it was ready to slide off his boney frame. His skinny face made his eyes look fat and bulging. I always secretly thought that Bud’s face would resemble what a cantankerous alien would look like in a hairy brown suit.
While I went through the motions of preparing Bud for his walk over to the other barn, I started thinking about what the instructor said. Thirty minutes sounds like a pretty long time to clip a horse. Maybe he really meant “head to toe”. The damn horse is nothing but hair, a bit of skin and bones. I need to ask him again to be sure.
I tied Bud to a post in the second barn and collected the clipping kit.
“I just want to make sure, but you want me to cut everything,” I asked.
“Head to toe. Everything. You have 25 minutes now. Suggest you get going,” he responded.
“Okay,” I said.
That answer solved it and I trotted off trying to save time getting back to the horse. I was getting nervous. My time was ticking and I had the whole horse to clip. I started on Bud’s flank. I knew not to go too close to the skin, but it was hard to make measured strokes with the clippers. Bud would dance back and forth in the barn. His shoes would echo throughout the barn with every evading step he made.
The situation was getting stressful. I had sweat dripping down my face even though the interior of the barn was shaded. The industrial sized fans creating a breeze in the barn didn’t help lower the temperature outside. Clumps of Bud’s hair started to jam the clippers, which were already slightly dull. When the clippers pulled, the old horse would start maneuvering once again. What I thought to be an easy task, turned out to be a dancing nightmare. “Stay still,” I would grunt, jerking the harness attached to his head.
By the time the NCO came to see my progress, I couldn’t control much of anything with the horse. We were both exhausted. I stood there and turned off the clippers as he approached us. We stood there surrounded by a halo of Bud’s hair. Almost one whole rib cage was exposed and nearly hairless in some patches. It looked as if I took turns cutting his hair with shaving razor in some areas and a spoon in others. Not only did Bud look like a starved alien with bug eyes, he also looked retarded now.
Thirty minutes my ass. There is no way anyone can trim a whole horse up in thirty minutes, I thought to myself. I wasn’t too worried about missing my time. It would be like telling someone to make the whole day while only breathing once in a while.
“What the fuck are you doing,” cried the NCO. “What is all this. You were only supposed to trim the horse. I can’t believe this.”
“He kept moving I had no way to keep him steady. I tried some of the clipper guards, but they didn’t help,” I said.
The NCOs mouth was held ajar as he ran a hand over the area I cut. He turned to me and said, “Didn’t you watch what we cut the other day. Did you see that we only cut the hooves, mane, and the face? Where have you seen anyone cut the coat,” he asked.
I was starting to get a little frustrated. “Hey, I came back and even asked you what I had to cut in thirty minute. You told me twice, ‘head to toe’. I would have asked again for the third time, but I don’t think your answer would have changed”. By this time, Adams and Cooley had walked out of the classroom to see what was going on. They stood back, not saying much of anything, but they didn’t need to. They couldn’t contain their look of astonishment. Fuck ups like these only came around once in a while. Even though we were all still pretty green to the ways Caisson worked, they, me included at this point, knew this was bad.
“Hold on a second,” said the NCO. “I need to get someone.”
The training NCO was actually a specialist and didn’t truly have any authority outside of the three of us. He wasn’t too young, but we could all tell he got off on his authority for all of us to always address him as “Specialist”. In this case, he needed backup. What I had done needed a stronger assessment of exactly how bad I screwed up.
As soon as our training specialist left the barn, Cooley immediately rushed to my side, giving me a lopsided grin. “Kubicki, what did you do?”
Getting even more agitated by the second, all I could choke out was, “the bastard said head to toe about ten times. Both of you heard me in there ask him.”
Cooley empathized with me, where the two of us were cool with each other, Adams, was the outcast in our class. “Wow,” was all he could muster through his grin while he petted the horse I just finished abusing. I think his smile came more from the relief that it wasn’t him who screwed the horse up. He was already on the wire for being late for formation.
We didn’t say much as we watched one of the squad leaders make his way through the exercise lot with the training specialist in tow. It was one of those moments, where you know it can’t get much worse. I didn’t think I was going to get kicked out of the class, but I didn’t want to get my ass chewed either.
SSG Hildebrandt came into the barn looking for the damage I created. He slapped Bud on the his flank to get the horse to expose his other side. “Holy shit,” he laughed. “You did this,” he said. While he looked at me with a slight grin of disbelief.
“Yes Sergeant,” I replied. My anxiety began to subside.
“Good thing the specialist didn’t give you anymore time than thirty minutes,” he said.
The specialist hung back in the wings while SSG Hildebrandt counseled me on only what we trimmed on the horse. “Never cut anything else again. Do you hear me Kubicki,” he asked with a smile.
“Yes Sergeant,” I responded.
Word got around the barn quicker than a fire in a saw mill. Guys were making jokes even before the day was out. Soldiers who had been in the cemetery all day doing missions had known about my screw up even before they made it back to the barn. They were eager to check out Bud’s new haircut as soon as they cared of their horses. It was about four months before anyone could even ride Bud after his haircut. Any saddle would have caused a gall on his shaved side. It worked out well for the poor bastard in the end. I always thought he was too old to be ridden anyway.
During our ten week training course, giving hair cuts to the horses was a skill we had to practice. As instructed in our training class, for each horse we had to clip its whiskers, mane, ear hair, and hooves. Our training NCO chose me to be the first to start clipping.
“You’re first. Go and get Bud from his stall and bring him over. We are going to clip the horses in this barn,” he said. “Everyone will have 30 minutes to clip their horses from head to toe. You all have seen it done earlier this week so there should be no problems. “
“Ok. No problem,” I replied and trotted off to the other barn, delighted it was Bud and not Reggie.
Bud was the oldest horse in the barn. At almost 25 years old, his skin looked like it was ready to slide off his boney frame. His skinny face made his eyes look fat and bulging. I always secretly thought that Bud’s face would resemble what a cantankerous alien would look like in a hairy brown suit.
While I went through the motions of preparing Bud for his walk over to the other barn, I started thinking about what the instructor said. Thirty minutes sounds like a pretty long time to clip a horse. Maybe he really meant “head to toe”. The damn horse is nothing but hair, a bit of skin and bones. I need to ask him again to be sure.
I tied Bud to a post in the second barn and collected the clipping kit.
“I just want to make sure, but you want me to cut everything,” I asked.
“Head to toe. Everything. You have 25 minutes now. Suggest you get going,” he responded.
“Okay,” I said.
That answer solved it and I trotted off trying to save time getting back to the horse. I was getting nervous. My time was ticking and I had the whole horse to clip. I started on Bud’s flank. I knew not to go too close to the skin, but it was hard to make measured strokes with the clippers. Bud would dance back and forth in the barn. His shoes would echo throughout the barn with every evading step he made.
The situation was getting stressful. I had sweat dripping down my face even though the interior of the barn was shaded. The industrial sized fans creating a breeze in the barn didn’t help lower the temperature outside. Clumps of Bud’s hair started to jam the clippers, which were already slightly dull. When the clippers pulled, the old horse would start maneuvering once again. What I thought to be an easy task, turned out to be a dancing nightmare. “Stay still,” I would grunt, jerking the harness attached to his head.
By the time the NCO came to see my progress, I couldn’t control much of anything with the horse. We were both exhausted. I stood there and turned off the clippers as he approached us. We stood there surrounded by a halo of Bud’s hair. Almost one whole rib cage was exposed and nearly hairless in some patches. It looked as if I took turns cutting his hair with shaving razor in some areas and a spoon in others. Not only did Bud look like a starved alien with bug eyes, he also looked retarded now.
Thirty minutes my ass. There is no way anyone can trim a whole horse up in thirty minutes, I thought to myself. I wasn’t too worried about missing my time. It would be like telling someone to make the whole day while only breathing once in a while.
“What the fuck are you doing,” cried the NCO. “What is all this. You were only supposed to trim the horse. I can’t believe this.”
“He kept moving I had no way to keep him steady. I tried some of the clipper guards, but they didn’t help,” I said.
The NCOs mouth was held ajar as he ran a hand over the area I cut. He turned to me and said, “Didn’t you watch what we cut the other day. Did you see that we only cut the hooves, mane, and the face? Where have you seen anyone cut the coat,” he asked.
I was starting to get a little frustrated. “Hey, I came back and even asked you what I had to cut in thirty minute. You told me twice, ‘head to toe’. I would have asked again for the third time, but I don’t think your answer would have changed”. By this time, Adams and Cooley had walked out of the classroom to see what was going on. They stood back, not saying much of anything, but they didn’t need to. They couldn’t contain their look of astonishment. Fuck ups like these only came around once in a while. Even though we were all still pretty green to the ways Caisson worked, they, me included at this point, knew this was bad.
“Hold on a second,” said the NCO. “I need to get someone.”
The training NCO was actually a specialist and didn’t truly have any authority outside of the three of us. He wasn’t too young, but we could all tell he got off on his authority for all of us to always address him as “Specialist”. In this case, he needed backup. What I had done needed a stronger assessment of exactly how bad I screwed up.
As soon as our training specialist left the barn, Cooley immediately rushed to my side, giving me a lopsided grin. “Kubicki, what did you do?”
Getting even more agitated by the second, all I could choke out was, “the bastard said head to toe about ten times. Both of you heard me in there ask him.”
Cooley empathized with me, where the two of us were cool with each other, Adams, was the outcast in our class. “Wow,” was all he could muster through his grin while he petted the horse I just finished abusing. I think his smile came more from the relief that it wasn’t him who screwed the horse up. He was already on the wire for being late for formation.
We didn’t say much as we watched one of the squad leaders make his way through the exercise lot with the training specialist in tow. It was one of those moments, where you know it can’t get much worse. I didn’t think I was going to get kicked out of the class, but I didn’t want to get my ass chewed either.
SSG Hildebrandt came into the barn looking for the damage I created. He slapped Bud on the his flank to get the horse to expose his other side. “Holy shit,” he laughed. “You did this,” he said. While he looked at me with a slight grin of disbelief.
“Yes Sergeant,” I replied. My anxiety began to subside.
“Good thing the specialist didn’t give you anymore time than thirty minutes,” he said.
The specialist hung back in the wings while SSG Hildebrandt counseled me on only what we trimmed on the horse. “Never cut anything else again. Do you hear me Kubicki,” he asked with a smile.
“Yes Sergeant,” I responded.
Word got around the barn quicker than a fire in a saw mill. Guys were making jokes even before the day was out. Soldiers who had been in the cemetery all day doing missions had known about my screw up even before they made it back to the barn. They were eager to check out Bud’s new haircut as soon as they cared of their horses. It was about four months before anyone could even ride Bud after his haircut. Any saddle would have caused a gall on his shaved side. It worked out well for the poor bastard in the end. I always thought he was too old to be ridden anyway.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Third-Grade Accusations
One of the many vignettes I have created - some stand on their own, however, most don't. If you are looking for storyline and plot, you'll likely click away disappointed. Commentary, on the other hand, you might like it.
Third Grade Accusations
When I was in third-grade, I had my first experience with that particular humiliation that only seems to come from encounters with the opposite sex. We had a new girl from Wisconsin join our class. My friend Steve and I had an instant crush on her from the first day. We would share our daydreams of rescuing Jessica from whatever disaster our capricious minds could drum up while we walked home from school together.
Weeks later, as luck had it, when our teacher Mrs. Alanson made the seating roster, she sat Jessica directly behind me. I looked back at Steve with a smile, knowing that fortune and true love had fallen into my lap by a seating assignment. “Mrs. Alanson must know that Jessica likes me, else she wouldn’t sit her right next to me in class,” I taunted Steve on the way home.
“Whatever,” he would respond in a truculent fashion. My enthusiasm for the subject never wavered, even with his fierce attempts to change the subject. I never expected he had plans to retaliate.
Days later, I came down with chicken pox and missed a week of school. Any time when an ill classmate was going to be out for more a few days, Mrs. Alanson,- who looked very much like Ralphie’s teacher from the movie A Christmas Story- would have us all draw get-well cards for the lucky brat missing class. I still remember the cards my classmates drew for me.
Of the thirty cards delivered to me in a paper grocery bag, I tossed all but two aside. One was from my buddy Steve and the other was from Jessica- these were the only ones that mattered. Jessica’s card had a drawing of an eagle with a get-well message. In his card, Steve sent me news that Jessica said she missed me and liked me. I was ecstatic. For the first time, I couldn’t wait to go back to school. She’s going to be my girlfriend was all I could think about while I sat at home, my body crusty with pink Calamine lotion.
I was about to find out that Jessica wasn’t quite the angel I initially thought. The day I returned from school, I approached Jessica about her comments about missing me while I was gone. “Ha ha, Steve was playing with you. I never said that,” she snickered.
“Oh,” was all I could muster before I slinked away, red from embarrassment.
Later that afternoon, our class was making trees decked with autumn leaves made of construction paper. We collected our materials and went to work. I put a large, black hole in the center of the tree, imagining a squirrel nesting there. I was proud of my idea. I even drew the squirrel into the tree branches above. No one else thought about something like that.
When I turned around to show Jessica my idea, she gave me an evil look. Instantly, as if waiting for me, she sneered, “You copied off me.”
“No, I didn’t,” I retorted, shocked by her accusation.
My jaw dropped, and before I could muster anything else to say, the words, “I’m telling Teacher” echoed in my ears, sounding slurred and surreal. She bolted to the back of the class, where the teacher sat. I watched from my desk with a pale face, mortified at the little wretch’s exaggerated gestures and counted the severe glances my teacher sent in my direction. I was about to piss my pants. My world was over. In seconds, the girl of my dreams became a vicious and vindictive snake.
Jessica skipped back to her seat with a satisfied smirk on her face. The teacher stalked to the front of the class and demanded our attention.
“Children. I want to make sure you all understand that these art projects are to be your own ideas.” Mrs. Alanson was addressing the whole class, however, her eyes never left me. “There is someone who has been cheating. Let’s all do our own work from now on.” I sat there in shock while her intimidating eyes kept me silent. The class knew that Mrs. Alanson had just branded me with the scarlet letter. I was red with injustice. I could still hear the glee Jessica’s voice as she leaned forward and whispered, “ha ha” into my ear.
Third Grade Accusations
When I was in third-grade, I had my first experience with that particular humiliation that only seems to come from encounters with the opposite sex. We had a new girl from Wisconsin join our class. My friend Steve and I had an instant crush on her from the first day. We would share our daydreams of rescuing Jessica from whatever disaster our capricious minds could drum up while we walked home from school together.
Weeks later, as luck had it, when our teacher Mrs. Alanson made the seating roster, she sat Jessica directly behind me. I looked back at Steve with a smile, knowing that fortune and true love had fallen into my lap by a seating assignment. “Mrs. Alanson must know that Jessica likes me, else she wouldn’t sit her right next to me in class,” I taunted Steve on the way home.
“Whatever,” he would respond in a truculent fashion. My enthusiasm for the subject never wavered, even with his fierce attempts to change the subject. I never expected he had plans to retaliate.
Days later, I came down with chicken pox and missed a week of school. Any time when an ill classmate was going to be out for more a few days, Mrs. Alanson,- who looked very much like Ralphie’s teacher from the movie A Christmas Story- would have us all draw get-well cards for the lucky brat missing class. I still remember the cards my classmates drew for me.
Of the thirty cards delivered to me in a paper grocery bag, I tossed all but two aside. One was from my buddy Steve and the other was from Jessica- these were the only ones that mattered. Jessica’s card had a drawing of an eagle with a get-well message. In his card, Steve sent me news that Jessica said she missed me and liked me. I was ecstatic. For the first time, I couldn’t wait to go back to school. She’s going to be my girlfriend was all I could think about while I sat at home, my body crusty with pink Calamine lotion.
I was about to find out that Jessica wasn’t quite the angel I initially thought. The day I returned from school, I approached Jessica about her comments about missing me while I was gone. “Ha ha, Steve was playing with you. I never said that,” she snickered.
“Oh,” was all I could muster before I slinked away, red from embarrassment.
Later that afternoon, our class was making trees decked with autumn leaves made of construction paper. We collected our materials and went to work. I put a large, black hole in the center of the tree, imagining a squirrel nesting there. I was proud of my idea. I even drew the squirrel into the tree branches above. No one else thought about something like that.
When I turned around to show Jessica my idea, she gave me an evil look. Instantly, as if waiting for me, she sneered, “You copied off me.”
“No, I didn’t,” I retorted, shocked by her accusation.
My jaw dropped, and before I could muster anything else to say, the words, “I’m telling Teacher” echoed in my ears, sounding slurred and surreal. She bolted to the back of the class, where the teacher sat. I watched from my desk with a pale face, mortified at the little wretch’s exaggerated gestures and counted the severe glances my teacher sent in my direction. I was about to piss my pants. My world was over. In seconds, the girl of my dreams became a vicious and vindictive snake.
Jessica skipped back to her seat with a satisfied smirk on her face. The teacher stalked to the front of the class and demanded our attention.
“Children. I want to make sure you all understand that these art projects are to be your own ideas.” Mrs. Alanson was addressing the whole class, however, her eyes never left me. “There is someone who has been cheating. Let’s all do our own work from now on.” I sat there in shock while her intimidating eyes kept me silent. The class knew that Mrs. Alanson had just branded me with the scarlet letter. I was red with injustice. I could still hear the glee Jessica’s voice as she leaned forward and whispered, “ha ha” into my ear.
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